Life with Dick and Bumsy

Gazing into the abyss of Richard Burton's diaries.

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11th April, 2013

I searched E.’s bumsy very often to check up on its progress. It is an extraordinary thing to look up somebody’s ass-hole, and a beautiful ass it is, and to do it not with lust or sex in mind, but with love. (June 8, 1969) Richard Burton’s Diaries do not record whether this formidable-when-sober autodidact ever read Friedrich Nietzsche, but in an age of celebrity worship, Elizabeth Taylor’s bleeding haemorrhoids make as good an abyss to gaze into as any. It’s also an apt image for this frustrating book. Burton’s diaries were gifted to Swansea University by his widow ...

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